setting an extra place

Christians often speak too narrowly of vocation. Certainly, many of us feel called to medicine, caregiving, or teaching, to public service or art. We have a fire in our bones to wield our passions and talents well to make a difference, yet not everyone is paid for her labor or finds their job fulfilling, rendering many insignificant or invisible in conversations about purpose and calling. But there are infinite ways to make an impact, including when economies slow, life derails our best laid plans, and even our bodies betray us.

I've got a piece up today at The Mudroom about community and hospitality. Come say hello, won't you? It's been a while!

image: jirfy

God gives to his beloved sleep

If you're gonna go back to work full-time after seven years, it's probably best to go back after your youngest kid starts kindergarten rather than just before, especially if you're planning an October move from your home of more than a decade. We managed a few garage sales and cleared out a good bit of not nearly enough stuff ahead of time, but that and finding a new place and summer camp and commuting and starting a business sorta ate into what should have been packing time, which is why two weeks later we're still not entirely out of the farmhouse. (Hold me.)

Summer disappeared in a blink I barely remember. Team Paul could use a vacation, but I'm not sure where our suitcases are, and we're committed here till Christmas. Adulting is not for the faint of heart.

But the expectant canvas of vacant walls and as-yet-unmade memories are gifts, if lonesome ones, and our weary hearts receive them afresh, like amber leaves and dawn's new mercies.

begin the begin

I went back to work full-time in affordable housing about a month ago. We're still figuring out how all this juggling works on the home front, but Team Paul is happy. I'm happy...thriving, even. For the first time in a long time, everyone in the family has their own physical sphere, which is good for the soul, I think.

Today is the first day of our last summer at camp. Jim's three weeks of staff training (typically the roughest of my year) are over, and I barely even noticed. Everything is changing. In the fall, Jim will launch his own business, James starts kindergarten, and we'll swap our farm house for a rental somewhere in town. So much is in flux, but we're ready to receive whatever comes next. It's time to leave well.

image source

i left my heart in pittsburgh

When we discovered a third floor walk-up in a brick Bloomfield row house, we knew our little family of two had come home to the East End at last. Boasting a sunny kitchen outfitted in fifties-era fixtures and compact appliances, Hobbit ceilings, and actual sleeping quarters, the apartment felt palatial at $325 a month. So what if it was accessible only by fire escape and lacked a bedroom door? The Shire was ours, and God bless the youth group parents who dropped off teenagers in the back alley for dinners and movie nights.

You Are Here is a multi-contributor storytelling site organized around ideas of place. I've got a guest piece up there today, and hope you'll come by and have a look.

i'm just so good at spaceships

"I'm just so good at spaceships," he admits, blue eyes sparkling proudly. He shows me the nature one, the water one, the sports one: an entire cottage industry of space craft in every hue. I admire his work and confidence, not altogether sure which skill I'd claim for myself.

I used to be a good youth minister, but that was a while back. I was a good caseworker and a good student before that. Am I a good mom? What's a good mom, anyway?

I certainly don't "control my kids," picky eaters and chicken chasers in perennial need of a hair brush. They're part of me, but they're their own little people, too. I'm not sure their strengths or mistakes are ever mine to fully claim. 

But mine are. I'm just so good at kissing their soft necks. I'm so good at read-alouds, and I make a mean chili. I'm really good at scouting fish frys and remembering where I've seen that actor before. I'm reasonably good at starting fires and packing lunches. It's no secret I'm terrible at being patient or on time, but I try to apologize and model how it looks to make things right.

James reminds me that good is a different beast than perfect. Cold space craft are perfect; noisy, naughty, messy, creative people are warm and good and velveteen-real.

On Female Friendship & "Girls Who Steal"

I want to talk about an article published at Gawker yesterday that is haunting me: Girls Who Steal, by Priya-Alika Elias.

Read it and come right back. We'll be here.

***

Just, please help me understand why on God's green earth anyone would put up with such behavior from anyone, let alone those we call friends?

Where shall we even start...the scarcity mindset that drives women to compete as if there were never enough love or success to go around? The distinctly gendered socialization against women standing up for ourselves or toward Regina George-level Queen Bee ugliness?

Is there a fear here of being alone or going our own way, against the crowd? I'm not sure I've ever really committed to trying to earn the approval of women or girls loath to give it, but I have endured many a lonely season, so maybe that's the trade-off some of us make. (Could hospitality save us from having to choose at all?).

I don't know, you guys. I love women. I'm grateful to have had good female friends since childhood, even if they are few and far between at times. The only women I tend to be suspicious of are the ones who claim not to trust or be friends with women at all. I have often found it hard in adulthood to make friends--which is another conversation worth parsing later--but never because women are capricious, dishonest, or mean.

But I cannot abide passive aggression or games. For better and worse, I am East Coast direct through and through. I mean what I say, say what I mean, and won't make you guess. I can be a bit of a honey badger, but love me and I will be loyal forever (even if I am terrible at keeping in touch).

Dylan dealt with some mean girl playground politics this year. I told her she needed to treat everyone with respect but that it was okay to put some space between herself and girls who consistently choose unkindness. Relationships are a two-way street, and none of us can want or work hard enough to compensate for the other party's sabotage or neglect. That is a losing game we don't have to play.

I'm interested, too, in the idea of whether or not people can make us feel inferior without our consent. I'm of the belief that we are all responsible both for our behavior and for handling our emotions in healthy ways. I don't think it is often constructive to attempt to hold people responsible for our feelings, but we can certainly speak up about behavior that is out of bounds and the hurt we feel--and create boundaries so that untrustworthy people don't have free reign over our emotional lives.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the article, female friendship, scarcity, Mean Girls, any of it. How can we navigate this better? 

a compelling sort of beauty

Team Paul could use a new couch. Our foam cushions are unstructured to go any sort of distance, and we're seven years out and counting. We picked it out when I was very pregnant with Dylan and not, perhaps, in fighting form for big decisions.

The trouble is, it's got a perfectly good, if unsightly, matching giant chaise, and we'd need to replace both to get the most aesthetic bang for the buck. And it turns out, Jim is still not much for aesthetics. He's eager to buy another overstuffed eyesore, which I will not abide this time around.

So we're making do. I rearranged, hobbling together a makeshift sectional from the couch, chaise, and crib-turned-love-seat. I smile, remembering the "stadium seating" my friend's college boyfriend put up in his apartment, but what this lacks in beauty it makes up for in proximity to the fire and space to snuggle, put up your feet, or read.

Which is a compelling sort of beauty, too, now that I think of it.

because being on the same side is overrated

keep me close by your side
sharing secrets and sorrows and
marshmallow tea

laughing till we pee
trade me stories like candy on
Halloween eve

memorizing what beauty
catches your breath and which aches
remind you of home

never seeking our doubles
(on this we agree!)
just remember i’m there by your side

image source

and the trees are stripped bare

GUESS WHO PUT IN A WOOD STOVE?? There's still a bit of masonry yet to finish, but our farmhouse is fired up. The winter of my discontent shall be a good bit toastier. Take that, polar vortex.

We threw a party: venison chili, mulled cider, and a fire for a crowd of thirty-odd friends and neighbors. Such a nice night. My brother and his girlfriend drove out from Philly to spend the weekend with us, too, which was great. We went out together to a quirky Northern Chinese restaurant ten miles further into the the middle of nowhere, PA, that everyone was thoroughly charmed by. Dumplings forever. Delegating pumpkin carving to Uncle Josh? Priceless.

James turned five, and we celebrated with blue key lime buttercream. My older sister visited with a crew of friends for a little team-building retreat involving jumping off telephone poles. My parents were around for a bit. They bought a little second home here a few years back and venture out every few weeks, to the great delight of Dylan and James.

Jim's been in Milwaukee putting on a big four thousand runner stadium race with his buddy, like you do. That meant nearly a week of solo parenting, but we hung in there, we did. Quite happily, all things considered, fitting in trick-or-treat, a living room camp-out, a movie night, and scrambled eggs for dinner twice. Jim is back, and he brought with him Wisconsin cheese, because all the best men do.

Pages:

50 Women Every Christian Should Know Michelle DeRusha's collection of mini biographies is worthy of a read. She's got mystics, martyrs, missionaries, activists, artists, and all sorts of diverse women spanning Church history. Definitely a good introduction to inspire further reading.

My Thinning Years: Starving the Gay Within More an autobiography than a proper memoir, I had a difficult time with this one, but I trust it would resonate with those who share similar stories.

Speak: How Your Story Can Change the World This title from Nish Weiseth, my editor at A Deeper Story, is about the role of storytelling in creating community and forging understanding. Her writing is interspersed with posts from the multi-contributor website, (including the first one I ever published with them. In print!). Like Nish, I've seen stories change minds and heal hearts, and writing in that community has been a tremendous pleasure.

As one who is equally appreciative of a well-reasoned argument (and believes that storytelling, like anything, can have a dark side), I wasn't completely sold on her story-is-king premise, but it's certainly a hopeful one, and Christians could all do with a bit more listening and not despising the days of small things.

Gone Girl Whoa. This thriller had me going. I don't want to spoil anything, but I definitely want to see the movie.

The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry Worth it alone for Anglo-Saxon Protestant Heterosexual Men. Berry is a national treasure.

Screens:

The Bletchley Circle: These BBC feminist period piece mysteries about a crew of smart and nerdy code-breakers are the BEST and altogether too few. The series/seasons are just three episodes a piece. The first is on Netflix, and the second I tracked down in the library system.

Scandal and Parenthood remain my faves. I'm also rather charmed by the freshman romantic comedies A to Z (NBC) and Manhattan Love Story (ABC).

Pretty sure I saw zero movies last month.

Perfection:

Bill Murray mumble-singing one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs forever and ever amen. Anyone seen this movie yet?

If Ruth Baby Ginsburg doesn't make you smile, you are dead inside.

All right, that's me. What have you been doing, seeing, loving of late?

take up a different story

The bell calls in the town
Where forebears cleared the shaded land
And brought high daylight down
To shine on field and trodden road.
I hear, but understand
Contrarily, and walk into the woods.
I leave labor and load,
Take up a different story.
I keep an inventory
Of wonders and of uncommercial goods. 

(“Sabbaths – 1979, IV” by Wendell Berry)

Growing up, my parents believed heartily in Jesus, honest work, and Sabbath. At some point, Saturday morning chores migrated to Friday-after-school-before-you-even-think-of-going-out chores, but Sunday was forever set apart as a day of worship, family, and rest. The only work allowed revolved around serving and cleaning up our mid-day meal. Homework was permissible, but not until well after dinner was savored and put away.

None of us were particularly athletic. My siblings and I dabbled in swim team, baseball, and softball, but soccer was out of the question, because those Sabbath-breaking coaches scheduled games during church, which I can’t remember missing once in the eighteen years I lived at home.

After Sunday school, worship, and a leisurely coffee hour that we seemed to close down most weeks, our family headed home to ready the afternoon meal. We kept on our church clothes and often hosted friends, family, or the sorts of newcomers for which my mom was forever on the lookout. Old ladies and young seminarians were among her favorites to invite to Sunday dinner.

Our family ate together in the kitchen every night, but Sundays were a fancier affair: fine china and silver set in the dining room; pot roast, meat loaf, or London broil; baked potatoes; salad; Crescent rolls (if you were lucky); and often pie. This meal was not rushed, and one did not fool around or dare giggle. Maybe, maybe you could get away with goofing off over Tuesday’s tuna macaroni (if Dad were out of town), but not in the dining room and certainly not on the Lord’s day. Sit up straight, and show some respect.

After the dishes were done, (You wash; I’ll put the food away and dry), there might be football or naps. Reading the paper was a perfectly acceptable (read: quiet) Sabbath activity. You could play in the yard, lace up your skates, or maybe bike around the block, but do not ask to call a friend. This day is for God, rest, and family.

Do not dream of asking to go to the mall. It doesn’t matter that you have a ride. It’s a sin they even see need to open their doors. Those workers ought to be able to rest from their labors, too, and they surely won’t work today on our behalf.

I don’t recall a great deal of Sabbath wonder growing up (excepting that time our guest revealed that his favorite t.v. show was Theverboten Simpsons, and our eyes grew wide, incredulous), but the discipline and ritual left a deep impression. Sundays truly were a day set apart to “take up a different story,” the kind we’re trying to write with our own young family now.

Sabbath keeping is contrary to so many popular myths, the greatest, perhaps, that we are the sum of all we produce or own. Rest embraces God’s grace and provision over performance or consumerist striving. “To insist on Sabbath is to give testimony to the subversive knowledge that God’s bias is in favor of freedom.” Sabbath reconnects us with Life beyond the exacting grind or madding crowd, honoring the One for Whom and with Whom we labor all those other days.

So we rest and we play. We worship and sing. We read and make art, sharing meals and appreciating beauty. We recall the Exodus and we dance, keeping inventory of wonders and of uncommercial goods.

the gift of ordinary time

Like the moon orders the tides, the horizon draws seekers to the shore’s edge each evening at sunset. The pull is magnetic and almost liturgical in its rhythm. From our vacation perch atop this tree-lined street, we watch the pilgrims flock. Neighbors appear on porches, cradling drinks, eyes trained westward. Kids abandon bikes where the sidewalk ends. Spilling out of cars and homes and on foot, they head for the sea, casting off shoes in the dunes. Where sand and sky kiss surf is holy ground. We pause together, bearing witness to the beauty which descends like clockwork and grace.

The sun is a dazzling ball of pink, with clouds aflame in orange and regal purple. Times Square’s yearly ritual has nothing on this globe’s daily descent into the Delaware Bay at dusk. Its regularity can’t diminish its magnificence, and I’m struck by how infrequently I honor this pause. The sun sets, of course, each night at home, but I barely realize it most nights in the shuffle of putting the kids to bed or getting dinner on the table.

My spirit awakens to the weekly rhythms of worship, prayer, and sacrament. I welcome the turn of the seasons in creation, church, and culture alike. Summer peaches. Back-to-school shoes. Fall festivals. Advent waiting. Christmas feasting. New Year promise. Winter quiet. Lenten fasts. Spring crocuses. Easter hope. Pentecost revival. Ordinary Time.

It’s the daily rituals my heart is missing lately, the ordinary ones, like stopping it all to watch the sun paint the sky amethyst and tangerine. A summer of travel and camp ministry has left me a bit adrift, and I’m longing for the anchor and stability of quotidian rhythms. A cup of coffee savored. Laundry folded and put away. Meals shared. Compline and kisses goodnight. Less hurry and distraction and more awareness of thin places.

“Every day, this One offers gifts–life, light, and hours in which to work and eat and love and rest–and invites humankind to join in the ongoing work of caring for creation and all who dwell therein. The same One also continues, each day, the work of new creation: the work of forgiving and reconciling and restoring wholeness. This too we are invited to enter, both as ones who stand in need of this divine work and as partners in it.

The Christian practice of receiving the day calls us to remember these truths with frequency and regularity. Forgetting them is costly. […] The practice of receiving the day is the cluster of activities that enable Christians to offer attention, daily, to the gracious presence and activity of God.”

Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

Confident of mercies new each morning, we’ll pilgrimage together, hearts expectant of quiet beauty, deep need, and great grace.

image source

like precious oil poured on the head

Sartre famously wrote that “Hell is other people.” Hell can indeed feel like tiny, whiny people who Just. Want. To. Watch. A. SHOW.

We’ve never even SEEN a show. Not in FOREVER.
Forever!
Can we watch a show?
What about now? Can we watch a show now?
Peg + Cat? Justin Time? Now? We’ve never even watched them in forever!

It’s kinda hard to disagree. (With Sartre, I mean. My kids’ grasp on forever is tenuous at best.) We can all be hell to be around, can’t we? We’re a hoggish bunch, prone to violent outbursts, icy snubs, and haughty insularity. We lie, exclude, and think the worst. We’re unfathomably selfish, but at least we’re better than them. (Ugh!)

But then I read Psalm 133 where David makes the rather audacious claim that heaven is other people.

1 How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

Community is where God ordains his blessing, “even life forevermore.” We are saved together for an eternity starting now. Salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The Kingdom of God is at hand, in our hands.

here the oil is an anointing oil, marking the person as a priest. Living together means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of the other–and when I see that I know that my brother, my sister, is my priest. When we see the other as God’s anointed, our relationships are profoundly affected. (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction)

We are each other’s priest: co-bearers of good news, deep burdens, and great joy. Evangelical Protestants are quick to claim that we require no mediator but Christ, but as Bonhoeffer reminds, the Christ in my heart is weaker than the Christ in my brother’s–or sister’s–word. When my eyes are weary and my heart is faint, I need you to kindle the flames of faith. At times, we’re all the paralyzed man on the mat in Luke 5: saved by the faith and faithfulness of our friends. We carry each other into the presence of God that we may be seen, known, and healed.

But what about the times when we can barely stand to look each other in the eye? When listening turns to mockery and blood boils hot? When we’re frustrated, furious, and exhausted, what hope have we for pleasant unity then?

***

The township put a gravel bike trail right through our yard this summer. I haven’t done much (okay, any) running since my 5K back in May, but I’ve been out there on my bike, stealing moments when the kids are at VBS or I’ve snagged a sitter from camp for an hour or two. (Glory.)

The trail weaves around the soccer fields, over a creek, past a cattle farm, and into town. It’s quiet enough to begin to hear myself think. To pray. And listen. Even the weeds and wildflowers whisper, and I remember the discipline of paying attention.

It’s quiet at home, too, before the kids wake, after goodnight kisses are given, and intermittently in-between, but I’m far less disciplined about cultivating solitude there. There’s work to do, sleep to be had, and tempting ways to avoid both in the light of screens.

We might practically judge the state of our psychological and emotional health by our practice of solitude. Our ability to care in a world of ongoing change grows when it is deeply rooted in a quiet, silent encounter with our faithful God. This allows us to move through our days without being terribly disturbed and distraught by the interruptions or disruptions. It also allows us to perform a diversity of concrete tasks without haste and distraction. In solitude we re-find our center and rediscover that our unity is continually strengthened and nurtured. (Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

If Nouwen is right – and I’m inclined to think he is – the elusive unity for which we long grows not in togetherness, sameness, or the absence of disagreement (or whining) but in the fertile soil of solitude. Unity is cultivated far from the din of the crowd.

If we base our life together on our physical proximity…life quickly starts fluctuating according to moods, personal attractiveness, and mutual compatibility, and thus becomes very demanding and tiring. Solitude, on the other hand, puts us in touch with a unity that precedes all unifying activities. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our already being united. Whenever we enter into solitude, we witness to a love that transcends our interpersonal communications and proclaims that we love each other because we have been loved first (1 Jn. 4:19). Solitude keeps us in touch with the sustaining love from which we draw strength. (Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

***

I took both kids out on the trail tonight for the first time together. It was ambitious, as they’re both two-wheel tenderfoots, but we’re hoping for family bike time on the boardwalk in a few weeks, so we’ve got to log the hours.

It was not, as one might imagine, a transcendent experience. One child fell off the path completely into a tangle of poison ivy, and the whine flight was not to be missed, but you know what? I didn’t lose my cool (much), and all in all, I’d put our little outing in the “win” column. They pedaled their faces off, ’til they’d earned tired like a badge. Although they took turns proclaiming they couldn’t do it and they weren’t strong, they did, and they are – even stronger than they know.

My little priests, anointed with bike grease and sweat, down the collars of their summer tees.

For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

Image Source

my confidence since my youth

When we rounded up camp’s driveway that first summer when I was ten, my stomach fluttered, and I thought my heart would burst. Two whole weeks! I never felt more grown than there with my own suitcase, shower caddy, and roll of 25 cent stamps to relay my imminent adventures across state.

The years blend together, a mosaic of the some of the best memories of my childhood. Singing “Blessed Be” around a campfire and making copper enamel pendants in the craft hall, not unlike my mom and aunt had in generations past. High and low ropes courses, rowdy games, silly skits, great friends–camp was the highlight of every summer.

The counselors were impossibly cool with their whistles and oversized clothes (it was the 90s), but more than that, they were kind. They wanted to spend time with us, playing cards at the pool or braiding hair on the deck. They gave up a good bit of freedom and certainly better pay to sleep in dank cabins and tell unwashed kids about Jesus, sunrise ’til taps everyday.

My parents and others told me about Jesus, too, of course, but they were old, and there’s no denying it was more appealing coming from Lori with the mall bangs or the really cute guy who played guitar at Club. And somehow, the way they told it, this Jesus thing mattered, not just at church but everywhere: on the playing field, in the cave, and back at home, too.

It was camp where I learned about the Kingdom of God and a Jesus who bowed low to serve. In quiet circles on the hillside and in rows dancing at the dining hall, I learned more of humility, joy, and a God who cares and can be trusted. A God who loves, forgives, and desires good for us.

Camp shaped me. It softened some of my edges and made me more confident. It strengthened my roots, inviting me deeper into faith, community, and my own gifts.

Camp wasn’t like school, with its caste systems. It was a community where it was okay to try new things, mess up, and not be the best. It was okay to ask questions, let down my guard, and fully be myself. It was a place where Love trumped competition, condemnation, or cool.

It was pretty much exactly like how Church is meant to be.

***

This summer camp celebrates one hundred years of ministry under the towering pines. It’ll be our family’s tenth summer serving year-round and our daughter’s first as a registered, bona fide overnight camper. She’s the fourth generation in my family to worship on these hills, and it’s a legacy for which I am indelibly grateful.

As Christians, we’ve lived so many stories of heartbreak and failure. There’s betrayal and hypocrisy in our midst and our hearts, and the Church isn’t always a safe harbor or shelter from the storm.

But every now and again She truly is: bearing good fruit, excelling in the ministry of reconciliation, known by Her love, resembling our good and gracious God.

Blessed be.

indoorsy

He wore a cowry shell necklace and enough white ribbed tanks that the next summer, camp banned male staff from wearing them. (Rock climber arms for dayyyyyys.)

Dating was discouraged, but we found each other like magnets and finessed the group hang. We met before meetings on the tree lined hill below the dining hall and stargazed late each day we schemed off together. Once, I think our time together even involved a creek hike.

Looking back, I can see how he got the wrong idea. Not about me liking him–that much was clear to everyone–but about my affinity for things like dirt and sport sandals and outside.

It’s not that I lied about being the outdoor type. I liked being a camp counselor, but I was there for the community and singing and late night heart-to-hearts on the deck over Pop-Tarts swiped from the kitchen. I was a religion major and future youth pastor who enjoyed Bible studies not bug bites. I taught helmet sports because no one else wanted to and co-led the mountain biking elective because they needed a woman. I was nothing if not dutiful, and I manufactured enthusiasm like a champ for those kids, because my counselors had done it for me growing up, and it was all part of the magic.

But outdoorsy and athletic I am not. God bless the great indoors.

***

One time in college I went for a run to CVS, and it was every bit as horrid as running the cursed mile in gym for Presidential Fitness. I walked home and that was that, fifteen years ago. My first and last volitional run.

We have these friends with matching six packs, strange people for whom running is like pleasure instead of death. Their sculpted bodies might be sort of intimidating if they weren’t part and parcel of two of my favorite people in the world, and when I confessed I’d never once run on a treadmill, their eyes grew wide, mouths agape. I’d been made again.

***

Four years ago, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through hell and back to get healthy with more grace and tenacity than is fathomable to me. On Mothers’ Day, there’s a 5K dedicated to survivors and research, so my siblings–by blood and love and law–are running it in celebration. All seven of us. Even me.

***

I downloaded a Couch-to-5K app on my iPod, and I’m plugging away, getting stronger as the earth springs back to life. I walk and jog on command, past nests laden with eggs, grazing cattle, and curious foxes with ears like antennae. I run from irate geese and sunning snakes, and every time a twig snaps, I pray against bears.

I ran the track in town a few times, but my favorite is the old railroad bed, where I mostly run unseen, save for spring beauty blooming pink among greening grass. I like the quiet and the landscape and the absence of an audience to my huffing, labored steps. I haven’t been this alone in a while, and it’s delicious.

But it’s not pretty. I’m sure my form is awful, and few would confuse my frame for outdoorsy or athletic now, but still I show up, laces tied. I do the work in embarrassingly scant but growing increments, drinking deeply of the fragrant April air. The peepers chirp in the evenings, and although my legs drag like lead, there’s a lightness in my spirit that wasn’t there this winter or last year.

He’s proud of me, my rock climber, and I am, too, when I breathlessly reach that next telephone pole or stretch my screaming calves at home at last, a bit less sore today than I was last week.

[Spoiler: I DID IT! All the gingers are my siblings. Love you all. xo]

Team Breastfix at Tiffany's

wherever i'm with you

I practically lived at the neighbors’ blue house growing up. I’d get there early enough on Saturdays to watch PeeWee’s Playhouse (unless, of course, I’d woken up there) and can’t begin to count the hours we spent in costume, lost to our imaginings. She was an only child and their home a charming oasis where classical music soared at the piano, and her mom served hot, homemade Chex mix, fantastical movies, and creativity in every hue. We accompanied her do-it-yourself parents on dozens of trips to Hechinger Hardware, played cards with her Nana, and celebrated Thanksgivings, because that’s what you do when you’re family, even if not by blood.

In high school I joined a Baptist youth group. My Presbyterian self rolled a bit differently, but I barely realized it till years later (when I told my youth pastor, “I followed in your footsteps!” and his eyes widened, confused). Back then we all just loved Jesus and U2 and each other. They were my skiing, singing, shelter from the adolescent storms.

In college, I joined sundry Christian groups full of earnest-hearted girls and irresistible boys with guitars, but when I found My People, they didn’t believe or look all that much like me. They were smaller and darker and laughed even louder, and it never seemed to matter that we weren’t The Same when the dance floor heated up or someone needed a listening ear.

Other times in my life I’ve experienced—or at least suspected—that I’m Too Religious to be accepted by those who aren’t, but finding a home among Christians is tricky too, if you’re deemed Too Free-Spirited or Progressive (or if you’ve been hurt too much or ask too many questions). Alternately, I’ve found myself feeling Too Serious, Too Silly, Too Smart, Too Inexperienced, and altogether Too Much. If only I could somehow make myself less—or more—surely I’d find my place.

But looking back, I have found my heart’s home at way stations along the way, just rarely, if ever, among people exactly like me. When my husband and I left the city for the life bucolic, it took me long and wandering years to find my footing, but eventually we did: at the evangelical camp where we live and work; at our Episcopal country church, among the elderly and empty-nesters; and with friends our age with whom we share secrets and meals and vacations down the shore but not our faith.

I’m increasingly convinced that belonging is more about nurturing creative space together than finding a “tribe” of people Just Like Us. Belonging is cultivated in the fertile soil of hospitality, kindness, and grace, not doctrinal, political, or cultural conformity.

(Anyone who tells you differently is probably selling something, and it’s not the gospel, which is surely not for sale.)

The honest-to-God, Truth-in-Love Good News is that our differences are gifts not liabilities. We need and complement each other precisely because our strengths, perspectives, and experiences are unique. We’re not meant to squeeze diverse passions, personalities, or people into tiny molds.

Folks are disenchanted with Evangelicalism. I get it. Sometimes you gotta get out, start over, and not look back. There’s just one holy catholic and apostolic church, and like the phoenix She’ll outlast every smoldering ruin.

But if there are no standard molds, there are few one-sized-fits-all answers, either. Sometimes we’re just running away, and we can’t outrun our ghosts. Loneliness catches up, and depression descends anew the moment we stop to catch our breath.

At some point, rootedness and growth require staying put, mucking shit, faithful watering, and more patience than we think we can muster.

There is always a death. “Pain is our mother; she makes us recognize each other.”

But we are an Easter people. Joy comes in the mourning. Seasons and families and hearts change. The Spirit whispers, and new life stirs.

Shadows lift at Sunday’s dawn, and the strangers and aliens are found at home at last.

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to one hope She presses

There is a time to kneel and a time to stand, and we stand for the Gospel and the Nicene Creed. With red prayer book in hand or heart, we recite the words that crossed the lips of fourth century Christians and rise today in congregations across the globe. 

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We believe together and affirm it as one, unlike the “I” of the Apostles Creed I grew up memorizing, the “I” of Protestant work ethic and personal salvation. With the Nicene Creed, we gather and we believe, we empty-nesters and octogenarians, families, friends, blue bloods, and the 47%.

There are times we believe on each other’s behalf, like the men who brought their friend to Jesus, lowering him through the roof tiles: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” It was their faith that sparked his healing, body and soul.

I believed for you when your heart was fearful. You believed for me when my foot slipped. We steady the knees that give way; we speak and believe.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We recite the Creed every Sunday, even when the diocese schismed and hearts rent. It was a divorce from which our community has yet to fully recover.

But there were streams amid desert as saints kept their watch. The men’s Bible study never stopped gathering at the Christian camp for coffee and prayer. The generous buoyed the struggling, as always, and we celebrated, grieved, and served together, because there’s always been more that unites us than that which divides. Christ’s diasporic Church is catholic still.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We speak the words like prophesy. Like the Word, we exhale life, ordering the chaos. There is

One Lord
One faith, to
One hope are we called

One baptism
One Body, many gifts.
One Giver
One work
One Table
One Church

Jim Wallis is known for saying, “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.”

We do believe, LORD. Help us overcome our unbelief.

*Photograph by D-Stanley, Creative Commons via Flickr. 

were not our hearts burning within us?

We had a party a few weeks back. Nothing fancy: chili and a fire and a few friends under the stars.

I soaked some beans and chopped the garlic. Browning the venison, I opened cans of tomatoes and spiced it by the palmful, letting the chili simmer in my biggest stock pot. Slipping orange slices into cider with a cinnamon stick and a few cloves, I set it to warm and pulled out every mismatched bowl and coffee mug we own. A stack of cotton napkins, a jar of spoons, a cooler of beer, and we were set.

Before long, the kitchen was crowded and the counters laden with pumpkin desserts, cornbread, and fresh salsa, but the chili and cider were all I prepared, and it was like the loaves and fishes: enough and then some for the forty-odd friends who turned up.

The full moon was so bright the children chased each other into the evening, and I studied the joy on your face. It was almost your anniversary, and you shone like newlyweds. (Was it the starlight?) We don’t even know each other that well, but you were so happy to share the night with us, and isn’t that the essence of community, bearing witness to each other’s loves and losses, great and small?

Standing in our farm house kitchen, where papers clutter the fridge and the windows always need washing, another beautiful woman with exquisite makeup suggested I write a food blog. She wasn’t joking, but I laughed: I didn’t even make most of this feast, and there wasn’t one Pinterest-worthy frame as far as the eye could see. She was the one who could throw a party: their wedding was an affair so elegant I’d wished I’d bought a dress and worn pantyhose, but bare legs and barely pulled together is how we roll, and neither she nor her spectacular eleven piece band seemed to mind.

I couldn’t pinpoint what was so charming about our simple supper, but I thanked her all the same, offered her a glass, and we talked and laughed into the night.

–

I suspect there’s a world of difference between entertaining and hospitality, and I wonder if fear of perfection keeps us from reaching out at all.

Our neighbors are the most hospitable people I know. Their house and budget are small, and with five kids running around, little is ever perfect, but few homes are so warm, and there’s always an extra place at their table.

We made our closest friends–after years of social strike outs turned this weary introvert gun-shy and grumpy–because they were relentless welcoming. “I’ve got leftovers. Can we bring lunch?” “Come over for dinner tonight?” “I’m at the grocery store. What if we stopped by with pizza before the game?”

It’s a risk to put yourself out there like that–vulnerable, repeatedly, and exposed. Last minute is not everyone’s bag, but it was the way to my heart, since best laid plans do so often go awry, particularly when you factor in small children. I can’t count how many play dates and dinners were thwarted by sickness, never to be rescheduled.

“What are you doing right now/later/tonight/Thursday/this weekend?” might just be the key to connection in an isolating age–not formal groups, party themes, or expensive ingredients.

Inviting, showing up, and breaking bread: it’s incarnation and alchemy. Ordinary moments hallow; common elements transform. Those with eyes to see take off their shoes.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:13-35)

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let's lay down arms, love

I was on-fire all right, and I've got a stack of earnest prayer journals to prove it. Christian concerts, youth groups, Jesus camp, the whole nine yards. I was all in and got the tee-shirt--or rather the tank top, signed by one of the razor-haired blonds from DC Talk.

But I've been thinking a lot lately of how I landed on this side of evangelicalism without the catastrophic crash-and-burn that turned so many of my peers into spiritual refugees. I keep wondering, What was different for me? and I think there was a light and a darkness that cut a different path.

I grew up in a Christian home and an angry home. I was a "good kid" who followed the rules, but my mother and I fought to the teeth, and I couldn't wait to graduate and get the hell out of Dodge.

I knew there was more peace in the homes of my friends who did not follow Jesus, and it killed me that my family loved Jesus so much and treated each other so terribly. It killed me that I loved Jesus so much and treated my family so terribly. I tried and I prayed and I cried and I wrestled, but I could not curb my anger or control my tongue.

I never was the perfect Christian kid, and my house never was the perfect Christian home. I knew I needed grace as much as anyone, and I never had any illusions that being a Christian meant having your shit together. I knew for a fact it didn't.

The lighter side was that the Christian communities to which I belonged (including my family) loved me fiercely, and faith never was tied to legalism or shame. They introduced me to a Jesus who loved and forgave and not a set of rules to follow, and today I can trace a path from there to here that reveals God's faithfulness all along.

the Church {a love letter}


You never were cool, but I liked your style:
flannel graphs, butter cookie tins, and junior choir
solos less about perfection than presence.
Gifts offered a King (enthusiasm counted)
Love served warm and strange as potluck,
rhythms generous, comfortable, and
radical in their simplicity

Deep and wide, Deep and wide, There's a fountain flowing deep and wiiiiiiiiide

Wasn't there, though?
A grace-well as big as our Lord

We're many kinds of people With many kinds of faces
All colors and all ages too From all times and places

That truth (along with the joy! joy! joy! joy!)
burrowed heart-deep and took root

The church is not a building The church is not a steeple
The church is not a resting place The church is a people 

presbyterian, baptist, non-denominational, emergent, episcopal,
In barn or basement, chapel or church
at summer camp in the woods or atop the city,
we worshiped with the Body beautiful.
Your raiment varied and vibrant,
colorful as the members who shared our first Love

I am the Church You are the Church We are the Church together
All who follow Jesus All around the world
Yes we're the Church together

I'm not naïve: you are as damaged as you are lovely
Your sharp accusations stung, left me
gasping for breath. Conditional
love at times stained my cheeks
But I'm no innocent, I know that.
My words wielded like daggers and
I've withheld grace, too
Unforgiveness is an ugly mistress
God, we're a wretched lot

But our imperfect love is velveteen real
surpassing what-if, should-have, and didn't-you every day of the week

Community is hard. Love is harder
--and easier, too, somehow. Half is showing up

At our best, you pointed me to the One who
holds us together, reconciling to
a Father who loves, the
creation that groans, and
one another, that we may be healed

You knew my heart,
the hard and wounded places, too,
and loved me all the more

Our Love lights the darkness
never so hot or bright as when our gaze turns outward
Let's lay down arms, love
Take my hand and remember
the Hope to which we are called

My friend Addie Zierman's book is out today: When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over. It is resonating with and healing so many, and if you grew up "on-fire"--or know someone who burned out along the way or is longing to start over--you're gonna want to get your hands on her lovely first effort, which is honest about the hard stuff and ultimately hopeful.

Spend some time on her site, How To Talk Evangelical, read the rest of the synchroblog, and get her book. Proud of you, Addie!

prayers of the body

Another summer we'd studied parables, but camp's new women's director was an artist and possibly something of an iconoclast, so she'd chosen "embodied prayer" as the theme for her staff's bible studies.

Most of us didn't even come from churches where raising hands was a thing, the "frozen chosen" being somewhat suspicious of emotional displays in worship (and in general). We liked our faith predictable as road maps and infused with intellectual vigor, thankyouverymuch.

And yet here we were, a handful of camp counselors sprawled out on the hillside, creating poses to represent the Lord's Prayer, conveying our spiritual journeys through something resembling liturgical dance, and praying with our bodies.

I was twenty years old. This did not resemble any bible study I'd ever been to (and I'd been to plenty), and I wondered if it might actually be possible to die of embarrassment.

---

Being nothing of an athlete, something of a school nerd, and everything of a virgin, I wasn't particularly connected to my body. The church culture in which I was raised, with its emphasis on the spirit's willingness and the weakness/(inferiority) of flesh, hadn't exactly led me believe that I was missing out on anything.

But when my friends danced on stage at their culture nights, I suspected that I was, sitting in the audience clapping, while they spun breathlessly, a whirlwind of brightly hued costumes and powerful choreography, their practiced footwork connecting them to each other, a shared history, and a physicality that was beautiful and good.

At the after parties, I learned to salsa, fumbling at first and slowly learning to keep pace. When the beat blared, in the low light, surrounded by friends, even an inelegant white girl might begin to feel confident in her own skin.

---

There was a tongue-talking church I visited once, with mime and prophesy, the whole nine yards. The congregation was as kind as a can be, and a young family even treated me to brunch afterward, but one of their nearly three hour services was enough.

But they jointly sponsored all-campus worship events (of a noticeably freer nature than the ministry meetings to which I was accustomed), and I loved their warm and unencumbered faith expression, so I went, every month. And I rarely had to go alone, like I often did to my own weekly fellowship.

There was something magnetic about the way they worshiped with their whole selves, and it drew us all in together, including my friends of flickering faith in Jesus and sold-out faith in dance.

We raised our hands and felt the Spirit move from the tips of our fingers to the swing of our hips.

---

That bible study on the hill was before its time, or at least, before my own. A few years later, I would join one of those ancient-future emerging churches and devour a book called Prayer of Heart and Body for a yoga course on meditation, but that summer embodied prayer still seemed silly, even frivolous.

What good was moving our bodies when we could pack our heads full of more knowledge?  (I was a platonist and something of a gnostic back then, though I didn't know it at the time.)

But seeds were planted.

I still remember discussing the posture of prayer, and something about that didn't seem quite as out there as the rest. I could see how kneeling was clearly a posture of deference and humility. Maybe there was something to embodying one's worship after all?

Cross-legged on that hill under the hot July sun, resting my hands on my knees, I closed my eyes and opened my palms, offering prayers and myself to a God who seemed almost close enough to touch.

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